Swimming world record holder turned hitman
Hitman Paul Cryne flew back to Britain to commit the “perfect murder” for a £30,000 (€36,000) fee to pay off his debts.
The 62-year-old, who still holds a Guinness underwater swimming record, was caught because of a crime he had committed more than three decades earlier.
Cryne left few clues for detectives when he carried out the “execution” of frail 52-year-old Sharon Birchwood in December 2007, the Old Bailey heard.
She was strangled and left “cruelly trussed up” with parcel tape and electrical cord on her bed at her home in Ashtead, Surrey.
Cryne – cleared in 2005 of another murder in Thailand – had been hired by her ex-husband, whom he knew from the country’s expatriate community.
Graham Birchwood, 54, stood to gain a £475,000 (€570,000) “pot of gold” on her death.
At first the plan seemed to work as DNA traces found on the woman’s hand, and on the roll of tape used to bind her, did not match up to any on the national police database.
But a sample found on the lip of a cup from Birchwood’s mother’s house in Banstead – where Cryne had stayed in the build-up to the killing – tallied with those at the scene.
Also on the cup were fingerprints, matching police records from 1972, when Cryne was jailed for seven years for holding his girlfriend hostage.
Birchwood was jailed for life with a minimum term of 32 years in June last year.
Cryne was found guilty of carrying out the killing at the Old Bailey yesterday.
Cryne entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1985 for underwater swimming distance in 24 hours.
In the 1990s he won a £500,000 payout after being hit by a boat while diving off the Maldives.
But divorced Cryne, who lived a flamboyant lifestyle in the Thai resort of Pattaya, had relationships with a string of women and by 2007 had debts of £11,000.
Judge Jeremy Roberts said: “He may be right in thinking that he’ll die in prison.”
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